


None of Us is Innocent

by amihanicole



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, Post 2.16, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 22:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4116508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amihanicole/pseuds/amihanicole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was early spring when Jasper went missing and a fortnight after that before he truly returned to Camp Jaha remotely resembling the boy with goggles who fell from the sky with a smile on his face. Whenever anyone asked him what happened during the two weeks when he was gone, he would crack a small, fragile smile and say “got lost, got found.” And that was that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	None of Us is Innocent

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this instead of working on "Yes, Princess" because I got tired of Jasper getting reduced to an ungrateful asshat, and he wouldn't let go of my Muses.  
> Rated T for language.

It was early spring when Jasper went missing and a fortnight after that before he truly returned to Camp Jaha remotely resembling the boy with goggles who fell from the sky with a smile on his face. It was the first time since the fall of the Mountain that he offered Monty a smile, the first time he ate with the group and chatted with anyone other than Octavia. His jaw clenched a little less tightly every time Bellamy spoke. His eyes were still tired, and if you were on night patrol, you might still hear him waking from nightmares with muffled screams, but it was getting better.

Whenever anyone asked him what happened during the two weeks when he was gone, he would crack a small, fragile smile and say “got lost, got found.” And that was that. It was true, of course. The night he disappeared he had woken from one of his nightmares right before one of his night patrols. He had himself assigned there (and Bellamy agreed) because it was one of the jobs that didn’t require him to interact with people much and was less likely to lead to him biting someone’s head off. That night, he exited the gates and began to walk, and he walked and walked.

On the first day, he barely stopped. He didn’t eat; he took two swigs from his canteen and only stopped to rest against a tree for a few hours. On the next day he got into the packet of rations he had on his person and finished his water but by the third day, it still had not crossed his mind to return to Camp. He had been inspecting a bunch of berries and trying to remember if they were edible when a hand grabbed his arm and spun him up and around, pinning him against a tree. Another hand closed around his mouth. He had finally been shaken awake from the haze that had captured him for the past three days. He looked down at his small but strong captor and saw blue eyes looking at him with shock.

“Jasper, what the fuck?” the little blonde hissed lowly.

Now, it should be noted here that Jasper, shaken awake from his trance, tried to struggle against the girl who pressed her weight against him. He was angry. He was afraid. He was confused. Adrenaline was pumping through his system. He tried to push her off, really, but something in her eyes pinned him down. Also maybe the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything but nuts yesterday, and she had grown stronger, leaner, faster. Jasper thinks it’s mostly the storm that brewed in her eyes, because no one would deny that that shit was powerful. Clarke has that effect.

“Jasper, you have to stay still,” she pleaded in a whisper. “And quiet, if you want to live.”

Jasper stilled, and for the first time, he heard footfalls. They were quiet, but they’ve been on Earth long enough to listen for grounders. They remained quiet and pressed against the tree until the sounds had faded for a good couple of minutes. The entire time, Clarke never took her hands or her eyes off Jasper. Jasper, on the other hand had closed his eyes and rested his head against the trunk of the tree. He did not want to think about this, about Clarke, about the grounders, about the fear.

When she finally let go of him, she backed away from him, slowly. “What are you doing here? Are you by yourself?” she asked softly. Her eyes raked over his body, assessing him, checking for injuries. “You’re too far from Camp Jaha to be alone, Jas.”

He shrugged, sitting down. “What’s it to you?” It felt weird to use his voice. Even before he had wandered off by himself, he didn’t speak much to the others.

She frowned at him but didn’t say anything. She took out a drawstring bag from the pack on her back and tossed it to him. He caught it, and out of the bag tumbled what seemed to be dry biscuits. He looked at her as if to say _what?_

“Eat,” she commanded. “You’ll need your strength if you’re going to get back to camp.”

“Fuck you, Clarke.” Jasper sneered at her as he jammed one into his mouth. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t get to tell anyone what to do.”

Clarke’s mouth pursed, but she sat down, across him, watching him. Jasper eyed her warily. She was wearing grounder gear, but it was a little different from what the Trigadekru usually wore. Her eyes were harder than he remembered and they were surrounded by dark circles. Scars marred her hands and her hands. She looked tanned and leaner and her hair was cut above her shoulders, with some of it in braids like Octavia’s. She was Clarke, but didn’t look like Clarke at all. She was fiercer, harder, more hollow. She reminded him of an exhausted, but unrelenting Lexa, when the Commander entered the camp in search of treaty with the Skaikru before winter finally came. This was not the golden princess of the Ark, not anymore.

“Jasper, how’s everyone?” she asked so quietly that it took Jasper a beat to figure out that she said anything.

“Alive,” he muttered.

“Bellamy?” she asked anxiously.

“Bossing everyone around.”

She smiled at that, and something breaks in him. How dare she smile when he could barely even breathe? How could she ask for someone she cared about when she could come back to them, while he couldn’t ever hope to see the girl he loved again?

“He wants you to come home,” he found himself saying, unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “But I don’t want you to. Stay out here to rot for all I care. Just stay away from us.”

She reached out to him, with pain in her eyes and apologies on her lips. “Jas-“

“Don’t touch me, Clarke!” he shouted, flinching away from her. “Everything you touch dies.”

She recoiled from him.

“Fine,” she said, with her voice cracking, Jasper didn’t need to look to know that she was crying. “I won’t go back, I promise. But you have to. You have to be safe. Just head east, Jas. Stay quiet and walk fast. You will be safe.”

“Why?” he spat, getting up. “So that your conscience can be cleared? Well, fuck that. Fuck you. I deserve to breathe. I can’t breathe back there, Clarke. No one can! They’re alive, but at what cost? Huh? No one sleeps! No one eats! None of us who were up there!”

He turned away and walked away from her as quick as possible. He got about five feet away when a blunt object rammed against the back of his head and blackness embraced him.

When he woke, it smelled like blood, upchuck and sweat. It was dark, and damp and he had a right and proper monster of a headache. He groaned. “Jasper?” a hoarse voice whispered into the darkness. “You awake?”

“Clarke?” he called.

“Shhhh, Jas. Quiet,” she pleaded. “I’ll get you out, okay? Just - stay quiet.”

A small, calloused hand worked at the bindings he didn’t realize he had on and led him out of what seemed to be an abandoned subway. Once they were out they ran, faster and faster. Clarke’s legs were shorter than his but he struggled to keep up with her. He shook his head, she was better like this. She would survive, unlike him, and bitter bile began to rise up in his throat again. He ran, though. She wasn’t the only one who gets to survive.

Once they were at what seemed to be a camp, Clarke visibly relaxed. “Okay, we’re here.”

“This is where you’ve been staying?” he asked.

“Yes, I was half starved and unconscious when Mayumi found me. Her family – her husband Gio and her kids – they’re travelers. They’ve let me hang around. I’m like the family pet,” she smirks, leading him down to a tiny tent-like structure at the edge of the clearing. “But they’ve treated me well. They have stories, and sometimes they help, even though they don’t know what exactly they’re helping me with.”

Jasper didn’t say anything. She pointed him to a pallet, which he had sunk into gratefully. She watched him with a careful eye and kept going.

"Those men, they're a team from the ice nation. Gio supposes that they're scouting the eleven tribes. But they were too close to Jaha. I think they're scouting you too. I followed them a little but I got separated from my family when I went after you. Now that they’ve tried to take you I'm almost positive that they want to come after our people."

"Shit," Jasper spat, sitting up. "That's great. Fantastic. Someone else on our asses."

"I'll handle it, Jasper," Clarke said, looking down on the ground."I've a standing invitation to Polis. I'll take care of it."

She didn't sound like she wanted to do any of it. She sounded resigned. Where did their brave princess go?

"And what?"Jasper gestured wildly. “You’ll murder an entire people?"

Clarke flushed and stepped into his space, jabbing a finger into his chest. "If that's what it fucking takes Jasper then yes! that's exactly what I'll goddamn do. You know why? Because I choose you! Every night in my dreams I have to make the same shitty decision to kill hundreds of people. It’s hell every night. I am drenched in blood that I will never be able to wash away. Grounder blood. Finn's blood. Maya's blood. Blood of the monsters and blood of the innocent. I took it all. I can smell it everywhere, Jasper. Every night I spill it all. But every night, every time I choose you. Every time, I will save you. I will save Monty. Harper. Miller. Bellamy. Always, I choose you."

Jasper looked at her silently. She was trembling with anguish and anger. Here was the princess he knew and loved. She was broken, and she had tears in her eyes but she was fighting for them.

"Then why don't you come home?" Jasper's voice came like a fragile shard through the air.

"Because, Jasper," she reached for his hand, and for the first time, he let her have it. "Back at the Mountain, I didn't get to choose me. I never get to save me."

She walked out of the tent and left Jasper with a raging hole in his chest. For the first time since he left Maya in the mountain, his eyes stung and he wept. He wept for the girl he loved, who smiled like the sun and held his hand the way you hold a secret. He wept for the way his friendship with the closest thing he had to a brother was never going to be mended. He wept for the angel who had saved his life when he was supposed to lose it to the mountain twice. He wept because none of them were ever able to save themselves. Not from this earth who took too much.

He fell asleep clutching at the scar the spear left on his chest, knowing that he will never be whole again, but he was alive.

"Wake up, sky boy!" a little voice called to him.

Jasper turned to see a little boy, grinning toothlessly at him from the entrance. "Breakfast is ready!"

He followed the boy into the clearing where food was being distributed by a dark haired woman. Clarke waved at him from where she was seated on a log with a ghost of a smile for him. A small child was on her lap; the kid looked like she wanted to bury her head into Clarke’s torso. Clarke was making goofy faces at the kid, and laughing as she failed to feed it some fruit. Jasper felt a little twang of unreasonable jealousy as he looked on, eating a bowl of gruel Mayumi had handed him. Clarke left all sorts of differently shaped holes throughout the Camp. The mother-shaped hole was one that no one could even attempt to fill. No one knew how to mother the children sent to a radioactive planet who survived survive against all odds like Clarke Griffin could. For the first time in months, Jasper let himself admit that he missed her. He missed her so much. He saw though, that this new family of hers was good for her. They shared their food easily, and their stories even more generously. They never asked for anything back, not even explanations. They just let her be. None of these comforts could have been offered to her in Camp Jaha.

“We’re going to the sea, to meet up with Luna,” she told him that evening, when the family had gone to bed. They had remained seated around a fire. “We’ll stick with her until Polis and we’ll try to convince the tribes to deal with the Ice Nation. You’ll come with us about halfway to the sea, but then you have to head south to get back home.”

“I’m coming with you to Polis,” Jasper mumbled. “I want to make sure Camp Jaha is safe before I go back.”

Clarke looked at him, searching his eyes. “Jas, they must be worried about you. What if they send out search parties?”

He shook his head. “I have to, Clarke. Please, let me do this?”

She nodded her head and squeezed his hand tentatively. Again, he surprised himself by squeezing back.

“We’ve missed you,” he whispered, without looking at her. “But I was so fucking angry with you, Clarke. Octavia, too. How could you make those choices? How could you have let Maya die, when she protected Bellamy and me and everyone? How could you choose Lexa over Octavia and all those people? I didn’t understand why you would do that. Like, I got it. You had to do choose. Someone had to make the choices. But I was still angry.”

He looked at her, finally. Her eyes were welled with tears but her gaze was unwavering.

“I know, Jasper,” she whispered. “Sometimes, I’m angry with myself, too. Who was I to choose who gets to live and die?”

“I don’t agree with all of your choices, Clarke,” Jasper said, returning her gaze. “But you were the only one strong enough to make them. I’m so sorry you were the one who had to make them.”

“Me, too,” she said, weeping openly now. “How could you ever forgive me, Jasper? How could I?”

He shrugged. “Maybe we’ll never forgive ourselves; we’ll just have to live with it. You come to terms that you did the best you could, even if it’s still shit.”

“Well, that’s crap,” she hiccupped.

“That’s Earth,” he said.

She laughed. “I missed you, Goggles.”

He followed Clarke to the sea, and listened to the negotiations between the tribes. When he and Clarke were satisfied that the troops Lexa sent after the Ice Nation (who she really hated, apparently, so no secret truces were likely) was suitable, they headed back towards Camp Jaha.

It was dark when the outline of the Ark was visible through the tree line. The family had stayed behind by the sea, and Clarke would return to them later. “I’ll stay close to Polis, and I’ll come to warn you if anything goes wrong,” she tells him.

“You won’t let anything go wrong,” Jasper grinned at her.

“I really won’t.”

Jasper crossed the space between them and put his arms around her shoulders. “Clarke, I can live with the fact that you did your best. I might not like it, but I accept it. I’m grateful for it,” he whispered into her hair. “None of us is innocent.”

She pressed her cheek deeper in his shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Jas.”

“Come home soon?” he asked. He tried not to. He tried to let her have the space she still needed to heal, because God, she still had a ways to go, but his voice spilled from his lips before he could stop it.

“In good time,” she smiled sadly, as she untangled from him.

He returned to Camp that night.

She did not return in good time. She returned in the very worst of times, and did the best she could, as always.


End file.
